OJT

I finally managed to build a somewhat functional Space Shuttle. It's not ideal at the moment, there's still stuff to iron out, but I got to orbit and landed at KSC, that's decent in my book

I've been having a lot of fun with X-Plane recreations lately. Here's a lifting-body SSTO inspired by X-24. Flies really nice, it could do with a bit more fuel onboard, and electricity in the probe core (it can fly autonomously) is barely enough to complete couple of orbits before returning, but it has just enough of everything to comfortably get to orbit and return, which is all you need really

I made this bootleg orbit-capable X-29. Very maneuverable (sometimes I'd even say too maneuverable), bit twitchy on yaw but surprisingly good spin recovery. No cargo or docking capability, but still a decent plane

Try the shielded docking port. It can take fair bit of heat and fits perfectly on Mk3 cockpit. It survives low Eve orbit reentry, so it should handle Kerbin aswell

The reason I am not so sure about whether it is fully reusable or not is that there are ways to make cargo bays out of non-deployable fairings (notable example is Stratzenblitz's Jool Infinity submission), however it requires certain manipulations in the VAB that the general players don't know of or at least don't know how to properly implement and, honestly, I can't say these manipulations were intended by devs in the first place. Also, unlike other parts left in the space, fairing shells don't get marked as debris in Tracking Station and they actually fully disappear when you use a non-phys time warp, which kinda puts them in a limbo I guess? Like, yes, you can retrieve them, but it is not exactly straightforward. All things considered, I have nothing against an asterisk on my submission . But I would like to hear what fellow players/challenge contenders think about it As for the workaround, it really was kind of spontaneous: I knew that the landing legs could handle the weight from my previous experience with building recoverable heavy boosters, and I knew that main ship had more than enough reaction wheels to keep it pointing upward if the surface is not perfectly flat. The one thing I was having doubts about were docking ports and whether they could hold the ship together under its own weight, and side docking port was truly initially meant for refuels: plane would be docked to the back and lander would refill the main ship from the side for ease of access. But I simply couldn't even stand the thought of spending lots of time on refuel runs again and seeing how the stack survived very fast Laythe reentry, I decided to YOLO it on Vall and thankfully docking ports proved to be sturdier than I expected

@JacobJHC Here's my second Jool 5 submission: Thread link Level 1 with ISRU, fully reusable (except for fairings, but I'm not sure if ditching fairings still counts as fully reusable, lemme know). KER and visuals are only mods like last time, Normal difficulty in same career save

Part 7: Return By the time I finished with all moons, I happened to be quite close to Jool-Kerbin transfer window. And I also had way more fuel than I would've needed, so return to Kerbin was very comfortable. I first ejected from Bop, did a gravity assist around Tylo to lower the phase angle and then did one big burn to leave Joolian system all together I did one more mid course correction and after 2.5 ingame years we return to Kerbin I had enough fuel, so I opted for retrograde burns instead of aerobrakes. I also did a normal burn to make the orbit equatorial to make recoveries easier With stack in low orbit, it is time to recover all three vessels, one by one. First up is the plane: it decouples, brakes in the atmosphere, glides towards KSC and lands. I overshot the space center a little bit, so I had to turn around and fly briefly under engine power. Runway landing was smooth Next up is the main ship. It doesn't have landing legs of its own, so it will be splashed down into the ocean. I was actually reentering a bit too fast for parachutes to trigger by themselves, so I had to burn retrograde at the same time to slow down. We splashed down in the end, not far from Island Runway Only lander left to be recovered. It doesn't have parachutes and its engines don't produce enough thrust in Kerbin sea level, so I'm gonna send another craft to recover it. I intially wanted to put a Mk.3 Cargo Bay on said vessel, but VAB checks showed that lander doesn't fit into it, so I changed the concept of the recovery craft: it now has docking port on the bottom similar to main ship (since we know by now that docked ships are rigid enough to survive reentries) and lot's of parachutes to safely splash down. It is autonomous and it is also single stage, so I won't need to switch away from it to recover boosters After rendezvous with the lander, both ships dock and return to Kerbin Parachutes deploy after reentry and both crafts safely splash down in the ocean east from KSC This concludes my second Jool 5 mission! All mission targets have been achieved: vessels were noticeably downsized, delta V used was quite lower than in my first attempt and every single craft used, from boosters to landers, were recovered on Kerbin, making this mission fully reusable! Probably my finest KSP achievement so far. Next set of pictures shows the flags I planted See you next time lads!

Part 6: Pol and Bop I decided to make one part for both moons this time. First is Pol. Reaching there took multiple burns: couple at Tylo periapsis, one burn to eject from Tylo's SOI and one burn for mid-course correction. Circularization didn't take much dV either We are again going to land the main ship with the lander on the surface. We know it can take it, and even fully fueled main ship will have more than enough TWR to lift off. You know the procedure by now: leave the plane in orbit, descend down Landing was easy, but I did need to briefly lift off and adjust my landing spot to land on a flatter surface Jebediah is planting the flag on Pol and posing for the picture Now all I needed to do is to refuel the main ship and return to orbit. Good thing? I could refuel the main ship in one go instead of doing refuel runs with the lander, saving myself the effort. Bad thing? Refueling took a LOT of time. Combination of small drills, single inefficient ISRU converter, almost empty main ship and the amount of fuel tanks in the said ship meant that the refueling took over 9 ingame years. I was fast-forwarding on max speed and it still took about 20 minutes to fill up the ship. Can't imagine what Vasya in the cramped plane cockpit must've felt Eventually, the ship did indeed refuel and I did indeed return to orbit Encountered with the plane and docked it to the stack Pol done, Bop is left. Burning towards it right now One mid course correction later I reach Bop, and circularization burn was on the night side again. One more burn to correct the phase angle and we're in low orbit! We're not landing the whole stack this time, since main ship is fully fueled, so Jeb will go in a lander. I docked the plane to the side and descended in the lander Jeb plants the flag and flies back to orbit Both ships meet up and redock And with this, all of the moons are done! It's time to go home

Part 5: Tylo Main ship landing was worth it: it now had around 3300 m/s dV, 600 more than before, and the lander was also fully fueled, which meant that I didn't need to transfer the fuel from main ship into the lander. Plus, since the stack faired fine in Vall's gravity, I could easily land it on Pol in the future to refuel the main ship on the ground instead of doing lots of trips up and down But first, we need to cross Tylo off our list of destinations. Which is where we're going right now Several retrograde burns, and I put the stack into low orbit. All burns were on the nightside of the moon, so the visibility might not be great This time lander with Valentina goes down alone. First the plane undocks from the lander and docks to the side port of the main ship. Then the lander undocks and proceeds to land Landing was closer than I expected (and it might've taken several attempts). I touched down exactly as my fuel ran out. But we survived in the end Valentina plants the flag and climbs back into the cockpit for refueling. Climb back happened to be very stressful because Valentina refused to climb all the way towards cockpit for some reason (and I did test the ladders before commencing the mission), but eventually she did climb in, thank God Refueled and rested, Valentina flies back to orbit Some small maneuvers, and ship rendezvous with main ship and the whole stack reassembles back Inner moons are done! Only outer moons remain

Part 4: Vall After departing from Laythe (I annoyingly forgot to take snaps), next up was Vall. Reaching it and entering orbit was fairly easy At this point, my mothership had around 2700 m/s dV left. In theory it should've been sufficient to reach Tylo and Pol while having fuel onboard to fill up the lander, but the margins would be too thin for my own comfort. Which means that I needed to refuel the main ship at least partially until I reached Pol. However, I absolutely did not fancy doing gazillion refuel runs like I did in my first Jool 5 mission, so I had to experiment on the fly Ingame stat readouts were absolutely buggered due to multiple ships attached to each other, however KER readouts said that I had enough TWR to land with my main ship. The lander had LT2 landing legs, which, despite their flimsy looks, have surprisingly good weight/impact tolerance. And since the lander was at the bottom of the stack, I could mine the ore with the drills and make fuel. I was a bit scared that docking port might not handle the weight of the ship, but since the stack survived reentry, I decided to give it a try. First I undocked the plane and left it in orbit. Then I descended towards Vall surface Good news! The Dacia Sandero is on sale in the UK The docking port stayed intact. These ports are much stronger than I gave them credit for. Valentina will do the honors (even tho the main ship itself is piloted by Jebediah) I only managed to refill the mothership to about half: any more fuel and I wouldn't be able to lift off. Even then the take off was really slow (launch TWR of 1.11), but I reached orbit in the end In orbit, the plane docked back to the stack Two down, three to go: Tylo is next

Time for the next part (or rather parts ) Part 3: Laythe Vasya Kerman is in the cockpit. He decouples, burns retrograde and descends down to the surface. The whole reentry section was quite calm and went without issues (as you can see from Vasya's face expressions) After sufficiently slowing down, I glide towards the island. After flying through the cloud layer, I suddenly noticed that the terrain was going uphill and because of that I had to activate the RAPIER engine to not crash into the cliff. Afterwards, I land on the top of the cliff and Vasya plants the first flag of the mission Soon after landing, I fly back to orbit, since I don't need to scout different biomes for science anymore. Still, I saw interesting geological formations on my way up like a canyon and a lake inside a crater After couple of in-orbit maneuvers, I encounter the main ship and dock back to it Laythe done, next up will be Vall Yea, fair enough. I think writing "entering orbit" instead of "circularizing" would make more sense in that situation

Well well well The progress on my mission goes slower than I initially planned: IRL stuff doesn't really leave me much time to play the game. Today I finally found some time Part 2: Jool Arrival We're picking off from where we left it last time: Jebediah 5 assembled and ready to depart. Due to low TWR of the ship, the transfer burn have been split up into smaller burns to reach the edge of Kerbin's SOI and, after transfer window comes up, one big burn to get to Jool (this burn occured on the nightside of Kerbin) After two small corrections on the way, we arrive to Jool Luck was not on my side on this one: none of the large moons were in good positions for gravity assists. Therefore, I had to do initial circularization purely through engine burns. I circularized into highly elliptic orbit, then with couple of small adjustments and two Laythe fly-bys to lower my orbit I managed to get a Laythe encounter at sensible speeds My situation was somewhat critical: I used up more fuel for Jool circularization than I initially planned, Laythe encounter was still at quite high velocity and to enter even highly elliptical orbit would use up too much fuel to proceed further, let alone getting into low orbit. The mission was on the verge of failure, I thought about trying it again from Kerbin orbit (I did have a quicksave), but I did not want to back down and decided to go all in or nothing... That's right, ladies and gentlemen: I aerobraked with the whole stack It got toasty. VERY toasty. Naturally so, considering I reentered at 3100 m/s. The main ship's command pod reached 93.5% heat level according to KER readouts. But the stack actually survived! (thanks to the revolutionary technique of spinning like a rotisserie to cook kerbals evenly spread the reentry heating) Knowing that Jebediah 5 can take the beating, I did couple more aerobrakes and succesfully brought the ship into low Laythe orbit while using 75m/s dV worth of fuel for inclination correction and to raise the periapsis after finishing the aerobrakes And there we have it: J5 in Laythe orbit. In next part, we will start with the landings Eh, might aswell. I definitely won't torture her with Pol landings, that's for sure

Spectra also adds dust as far as I know, but I prefer the looks of AVP

I don't think my shenanigans come even close to your Grand Tour missions Although now that I think of it, I think this mission took more in-game years than DREAM BIG, but my point still stands

Ah ****, here we go again Hello lads A couple of months ago I started a Jool 5 mission thread on this forum. It took a lot of time and a lot of prep work, a lot of stuff was unknown to me prior to doing it. Last week, I completed the challenge on Jeb's level and my submission was verified by the thread admin JacobJHC. However, with newfound experience and knowledge, I can improve on my first design and complete Jool 5 for the second time, hence the name of this thread. Without further we do, let's get started Mission targets: This mission will be done on Level 1. It will make the planning easier and I won't need to frantically check whether I did all the experiments, I will only need to focus on flying Vessels must be downsized from my first attempt, both in terms of weight and length Journey must be better optimized: there's decent amount of dV that could be saved with transfer maneuvers and reduce the mission time Self-imposed rule: the whole mission must be fully reusable. Everything, from boosters to Jool 5 vessels themselves, will be recovered on Kerbin Since I am already familiar with Joolian system and already have the satellite network established, we're gonna go straight into action Part 1: Kerbin First of all, we need to build the stack in Kerbin orbit. First up is the mothership launch. Jebediah Kerman, the captain, is behind the wheel After reaching sufficient altitude, Main ship separates itself from the booster and finishes circularization. After that, I quickly switched to booster and splashed it down in the ocean Mothership in orbit. Now it's lander's turn. Valentina Kerman is piloting this rocket Lander separates and reaches orbit. Booster descends and splashes down Last, but not least, plane launch. No runway takeoffs this time: plane will be launched in a rocket with a very thick fairing. Vasya Kerman is in the cockpit You know the drill by now With all the vessels in LKO, it is time to assemble the stack. First we hook up the lander Then we hook up the Plane Now let's take a look at the whole stack First let me give you some numbers: the whole stack assembled in LKO weighs just a touch over 200 tons, compared to 304 tons of the previous stack. The whole stack is also noticeably shorter, at around 34.5 meters: the Main Ship alone in the previous mission was 50 meters. Main Ship is now made up of wide assortiment of tanks, from 2.5m to 0.625m diameters, totaling around 7.6k m/s dV with both landers attached. It has 6 NERVAs instead of 8, but thanks to downsizing it has the same TWR as the previous gen mothership. There are two docking ports, one behind for the stack and one on the side for refueling. Ship has lots of parachutes and can survive reentry from LKO and splash down in the ocean Lander is downsized aswell, made up from 1.25m tanks instead of one 2.5m tank. Roughly same dV as in previous lander, enough TWR to land on Tylo and, subsequently, on other airless moons. This one also has ISRU equipment, although it is still the inefficient kind due to weight savings: I will have to pick my landing spots carefully. Lander has two docking ports aswell, one in front for the Main Ship, and one in the back for the Plane Plane is also smaller, has different wing setup, inline air intake and is now powered by single RAPIER engine, compared to tri-engine config of previous plane (2 RAPIERs and 1 NERVA). As such, it also packs some oxidizer for in-orbit maneuvering, but it still packs enough fuel for Laythe phase. This concludes the Part 1 of this Jool 5 thread. In next part, we will be departing towards the green gas giant. Stay tuned

Gonna give this a try, looks fun Starting with Phase One. Here's the rocket that will send 4 kerbals to Duna First stage is a Thoroughbred SRB, recoverable. Second and final stage is powered by Poodle engine, not recoverable. The living quarters have parachutes and side mounted engines to soften the landing. Launch is rather trivial. Second stage is circularized at 72km orbit 10 minutes later, ship burns towards Duna. Maneuver was on the night side of Kerbin, so we can enjoy the stars (and the Mun) while we're at it The burn puts the whole stack deep into Duna's atmosphere. That's right, there won't be any circularization burns, this will be a direct entry, sort of like NASA's missions Leaving Kerbin And approaching Duna Second stage detaches from the lander, heat shield is inflated and lander enters Duna's atmosphere Low into the atmosphere parachutes deploy, heat shield is jettisoned and lander slowly touches down on the surface 4 kerbals posing for a photo Final location The whole launch stack costs 50399 funds and recovered SRB was 9300 funds, bringing the total cost of the mission to 41099 funds Phase 1 complete. Phase 2 will come soon

Thank you for the review! Glad you liked the eye-candy The next Jool 5 mission will be quite different. I am currently testing out some concepts and if they work, I will post it here. I am definitely not making any "thin, superlong, tiresome to refuel" motherships that's for sure

So, I've been eyeing the Heaviest Payload delivered record made by bayesian_acolyte for the last two days, since it seemed somewhat achievable to me. I've done lots of optimization to my craft, got the payload mass to around 5.7 tons and around 3450 vacuum dV at launch. To be fair, the final launch vehicle ended up looking a lot like the acolyte's submission, but there's simply no other way of going around it (and I did try to build my ship around 2.5m fuel tanks and even attempted to make an SSTO, but it sadly didn't work), his concept seems to be already very optimized, and the fact that I actually managed to scrape a bit more dV at launch while having heavier payload than him is already impressive in my book lmao There's only one issue though: I can't reach orbit. I've been battling with this for the whole night. I tried various launch profiles, tried to go shallower or steeper at different points of ascent and yet every time I am about 200 m/s short of orbit (at best). I can't add fuel to the vessel because I go over the recovery limit set by the challenge, and there isn't really any place I can noticeably reduce dry mass of my ship. Besides, judging by the screenshots, acolyte reached orbit comfortably with enough dV to spare to deorbit, so at this point I am just confused. What's the optimal launch profile for the Kerbin takeoff? Anyone can lend me a hand here? Because if I crack this dilemma the record will (hopefully) be mine

Bumping up my submission if y'all don't mind

@JacobJHC Here's my submission: Thread link Level 3, Jeb's Level with ISRU in Normal Career mode. KER and visuals are the only mods, everything else is stock. No DLC parts. 26871.3 Science points recovered. If you have any questions hit me up

After 20 years on the outer Kerbol System, it was time to go home Part 10: Homecoming These landers served me well throughout the whole mission. Unfortunately the mission ends here for them, since I need to discard them to have enough dV to return home. First goes the plane And then the lander Main ship burns to escape Laythe and enter orbit around Jool After this, I made couple of gravity assists off Tylo and Laythe, did a burn, made another Laythe gravity assist and left Jool's SOI 2 years later, we arrive home, at last! I did try to aerobrake at upper atmosphere layers just to see what would happen. This failed miserably. Thankfully I made saves and circularized with engines Couple of more burns and I put the ship in equatorial low Kerbin orbit To pick up the pilots and science experiments, I quickly threw around an autonomous ship and sent it up Return vessel encountered the main ship and clawed up to it. Return vessel had databank storage, so data from mothership could be transferred automatically. Pilots boarded the vessel and left the mothership in low Kerbin orbit After carefully planned retrograde burn, the capsule landed near KSC Our team of brave kerbonauts, safe and sound on Kerbin soil And here it is! Jool 5 Mission completed on Level 3 with additional Jeb's Level challenge, amassing 26871.3 Science points all from Joolian system. Further in the spoiler are the stats of my pilots, showing their landing XP And this concludes my Jool 5 thread. This whole mission was a lot of fun, it took a lot of time, and I will definitely be taking a break from this game for some time lol. See you all next time

I really hope that I don't trigger any antispam-bots or something lmao Part 9: Laythe The final frontier! King Joolian circularized and experiments conducted. Now it's the time for the mission commander to show what he's made of. Jebediah Kerman takes the reigns of the plane Undocked from the main ship, Jeb burns retrograde and enters the atmosphere The plane slows down in lower layers of the atmosphere and glides towards the islands. Islands were mapped by satellites prior to descent sequence Finding a flat spot, Jeb lands the plane. I forgot how good of a glider this plane was during this mission. Never turned the RAPIERS on throughout the entire descent The plane has lots of dV in atmospheric flight, and the island I landed on had multiple biomes that I could explore. So I spent the next hour flying around, conducting experiments and collecting surface samples After finishing up, I aligned the plane of the plane with the plane of the mothership (that's quite a mouthful) and flew to orbit Then I proceeded to encountering the mothership and docking to it All of Jool's moons have been visited! Now all we need to do is to return home

Ooooh baby, a triple! Part 8: Tylo Only two moons left. Let's do this After circularizing at Tylo (I somehow forgot to take any snaps of me circularizing), Vasya Kerman boards the lander and proceeds to land. He is the second most skilled pilot in this mission after Jebediah, and since Jeb called dibs on Laythe landing, Vasya will be taking on Tylo Ladders are out, Vasya descends and plants the flag After climbing back (it did take a bit of perseverance not gonna lie), Vasya takes off, reaches orbit, rendezvous with the Joolian and docks to it. This whole section might seem quite uneventful, and it honestly was. But after what I went through on Pol, I really do appreciate this uneventfulness Everything out of the way! Except for Laythe. Where we are heading now

And we're jumping straight into the next one! Part 7: Bop Small midcourse correction, and we arrive at Bop You know the drill by now: orbit experiments, pilot exchange and subsequent landing. Nelzon Kerman is our designated pilot for this moon Since Bop also had relatively low gravity, I used it to my advantage and hopped around the whole moon and collected science, just like on Pol During the exploration, Nelzon found something unexpected: a proof of extraterrestrial life! Unfortunately, Val took so long refueling the ship that the alien died of boredom After exploring every biome (namely Peaks, Slopes. Poles, Ridge and Valley), Nelzon returned to King Joolian With outer moons out of the way, we will return to inner moons to finish up the mission

Alright, let's pick up from where we left off Part 6: Pol, too much Pol We continue from the low Pol orbit. There, Valentina Kerman boards the lander and proceeds to descend to Pol surface Low gravity, overpowered engines: landing was a piece of cake Here she is posing, blissfully unaware of what's gonna come next What came next, you may ask? Refueling. A LOT of refueling I mentioned in the last part that my main ship was running quite low on fuel, so I needed to refuel it in order to complete the mission. I did anticipate it, hence one of the reasons why my lander has ISRU equipment. But I completely underestimated the length of refueling (which, in hindsight I should've probably noticed) The King Joolian has capacity of almost 40 thousand units of liquid fuel. The lander only packs 1800 units. And out of those units I had to leave around 200 in the ship to have fuel to return to surface after filling up the ship, and I needed around 100 units to rendezvous with the mothership from surface. Which allowes me to refill 1500 units per one run. By the time I reached Pol main ship was basically empty... Which meant that I had to do lots of refuel runs while using fairly inefficient ISRU equipment Land, mine, take off, refill. Land, mine, take off, refill. I spent the last three days (and around 13 ingame years) doing nothing but refueling the mothership. The process was very grinding, but there simply was no other way about it. Thankfully, I have a lot of patience In the meanwhile, I used the opportunity and landed on all of the biomes of Pol, namely Lowlands, Midlands, Highlands and Poles After long and grueling refueling phase, King Joolian was filled up, Pol was fully explored and Val could finally come and rest, because she definitely earned it like no one else did in this mission After that, the ship departed towards its next destination - Bop And so the Pol chapter ends. I don't think I will want to return here any time soon